Travel

Friday, October 17, 2008

I went to have afternoon at the Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel in West Hollywood with a bunch of other foodies, including LA&OC Foodie - we've been looking forward to it all week!

In the daylight the interior of the Gordon is classy and gorgeous. White walls with some gilded decorations. Pastel colored chairs contrast with the dark tables. It also has a great view of LA.The afternoon tea menu is fixed (at $28 per person) and all you have to do is choose the tea. Compared to Jin Patisserie or the tea rooms, the choices are fairly limited with Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Green tea, Darjeeling, etc. There were a couple of interesting choices such as Tangerine and Cassis. I opted for some fresh mint tea.

The fresh mint tea is made with real fresh mint leaves - not the dried stuff! I absolutely love the aroma of fresh mint (hence my fave cocktail is mojito).

Everything were brought out at once but T forwarded us a little article about proper afternoon tea etiquette, and you were supposed to start with the scones, so ... first up! Plain and raisin scones (one of each per person), served with blueberry jam and chantilly cream:These scones were amazingly delicious and addicting. Very buttery, and with the wonderful blueberry jam and cream they gave us, each bite was just absolutely divine. The scones were definitely the highlight of our whole experience. We had to keep asking for more blueberry jam since it was soo good - they really should've just given each one of us our own dish of jam :P

We also had some spinach mini quiches that were oustanding!The center of the quiche is very moist and gooey - a cheesy wonderful texture.

There were 4 types of sandwiches for everyone: Smoked salmon, prawn cocktail, prosciutto and mozzarella with pesto butter, and goat's cheese with sundried tomato and watercress.Our favorite of the sandwiches were the Prawn Cocktail - fresh raw prawns with nice texture.But I will show you a close up of the prosciutto instead just because I thought it looked nice :PThe rest of the sandwiches were also good. Great quality, solid taste, although they do not stand out.

Each person gets half of each type of pastry (one for every 2 people). The different pastries, from the left, are: Coffee&Walnut Cake, Lemon Tart with pistachio, Chocolate&Lavender cake, Fruit tart with lychee cream, and Lemon Pound cake.I thought they were good but not outstanding - the chocolate lavender cake was my favorite, but overall cannot compare to cakes at, say, Jin Patisserie, or the ones at Ritz Carlton's afternoon tea. Lemon pound cake was pretty good, though.

I would come back for afternoon tea here just for the scones alone, even if nothing else. Knowing they have fresh mint tea will also make me come back though. It was a nice pleasant afternoon with nice views, good food (great scones), good fresh mint tea, and excellent company!

So there were 6 of us and each person gets one of each scone (2 total), a mini quiche, one of each sandwich (4 total), and half of each pastry.It didn't look like much when we were eating but after the pastries we were pretty full!

I never know how to fit tea into my day. Do you eat lunch? Do you skip dinner? Do you opt for a brunch/tea/supper combination? So many questions. Looked like it's worth checking out, especially with GR's new star.

Haha yes that is definitely the main issue with afternoon teas.But I think a light lunch early enough (nothing after 1 pm) and then a light dinner later would work.In a way it's good bcs it prevents me from overeating during dinner.